


Different Hammers

by snail_deity



Category: A Tale of Two Cities - Charles Dickens, Tell The Wind And Fire - Sarah Rees Brennan
Genre: Adoption, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Dystopia, F/F, F/M, Feminist Themes, First In The Fandom, Gen, M/M, Other, Parenthood, Social Justice, Women Being Awesome
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-07-23
Updated: 2018-07-23
Packaged: 2019-06-15 00:00:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 685
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15400497
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/snail_deity/pseuds/snail_deity
Summary: Lucie had always been an anxious child. During her first playdate she clung to Josephine’s skirt and could not be induced to play pick-up-sticks with the Irving twins; the twins, for their part, continued their game with good-natured equanimity.





	Different Hammers

Lucie had always been an anxious child. During her first playdate she clung to Josephine’s skirt and could not be induced to play pick-up-sticks with the Irving twins; the twins, for their part, continued their game with good-natured equanimity.  As Lucy passed the relevant developmental milestones, Josephine learned that her daughter’s reserve extended to speech, as well. Lucie had no sooner learned to talk than she acquired a propensity for long silences. She reminded her mother of Alex in those moments, when Lucie’s little sand-colored eyebrows would scrunch up in response to something Josephine could only guess at. Josephine wondered how old Lucie would be when she would inherit the apostrophe-shaped wrinkle etched above her father’s nose.

Josephine herself had been a carefree girl, a little bit wild, rough-housing with the kids on her street until just before curfew, when the sun went down and she and Leila were called in for supper. 

As a child Josephine had never been alone, at all times surrounded by her pushy, loving family and a horde of playmates. When Josephine and Leila were tucked into the bed they shared, their mom would tell them stories about the Bear Girl and the Kingdom Under the Sea until she had to leave for her shift. Her aunts taught them how to read, how to cheat at poker, how to break a nose, how to tell if someone is lying. Her dad always made sure their faces and hands were scrubbed before supper and tickled them when they sulked. She and Leila may have had one pair of shoes between the two of them, but it was a rare child in the Dark city who had it better. 

But even the sweetest of Josephine's memories were ringed by hunger and cold, and lurking beneath, the dread. Horrors that only became more terrible as Josephine grew and was forced to observe with brutal clarity, again and again, both the fragility of life and the cynicism of a system that blithely permits life to be crushed. The cages. The steel-toed boots. The whips, the blades. The fresh-pressed white uniform of a Light guard, worn by a body that has never known hunger.

She had barely stopped being a child when she had a child of her own. Now the horrors grew facets like crystals in the dark.

The ration lines. The catcalls, even when she was walking with Lucie. The blank eyes and half-open mouth of her mother, once so full of stories. Her sister’s simmering rage. Her father, grandparents, aunts, uncles, murdered or disappeared or wasted away before Lucie had a chance to love them. The ragged people who scrounged the riverside for useful flotsam and cooked meals for their families in the shadow of the bridge. Her patients dying of maladies unheard of in the Light city for a century, preventable with vaccines and basic sanitation, treatable with antibiotics to which she had no access. The soul-killing frustration of knowing _exactly_ what needed to be done and _not being able to do it_. Her bad days, when the idea that her life’s work amounted to a bandaid on a hemorrhage won out against whatever arguments she might have come up with in an attempt to convince herself otherwise. 

Worse, somehow still worse than everything else: the children huddled on sidewalks, some younger than Lucie, their faces hidden and shadowed behind cruel hoods. Skeletal and slow-moving, made bleary by starvation. Hands outstretched, the gaps between their cupped fingers. The way they wouldn’t even attempt to dodge the kicks of passersby. The way Josephine didn't need to see their faces to know they were begging without hope.

Josephine was determined to protect her child at any cost to herself, even as she knew that she would fail, that she was already failing. 

But protecting Lucie from the worst wasn’t enough. In spite of the world they lived in, Josephine had been raised with the precious bone-deep knowledge that she was loved. She wanted her daughter, her sweet, solemn girl, to know that too, and — Light help her — she wanted her to be happy.

**Author's Note:**

> "Crush humanity out of shape once more, under similar hammers, and it will twist itself into the same tortured forms."  
> -Charles Dickens
> 
> Also, I don't know if Lucie's dad has a name in TTWAF, but in AToTC his name is Alexandre, so I'm going with that.


End file.
